Yesterday I received my seventy-something email forward about immigration. They all read the same, "Would I go into their country and demand insurance / driver’s license / rights…?"
    This has made me think lately about the similarities between so many reactions to immigration, and the church’s reaction to the rest of the
world (those that don’t live within its walls). Before you gripe and moan and click th eback button, this is not a political soapbox. I am not saying anything for or against those who have come from Mexico or Yugoslavia or Kenya or anywhere else… I’m not talking about the legal aspect of illegal immigration.
    It has me thinking particularly because I see the same sentiment repeated again and again in emails, forwards, bulletins on MySpace, blogs and everywhere else. It is basically this: there is a way of life in America that is American, and that by allowing the other cultures to disrupt this way of life we would be losing our ability to be American.
    It just seems to me that, unfortunately, over and over we get in this me-first-consumerism mindset. Everything must be about us. "If it isn’t satisfying my needs than it obviously violates some constitutional right." We end up equating that worldly mindset with God’s will… if it doesn’t come easy and it doesn’t make me happy, it must not be within God’s will. And what inevitably follows that consumerism mentality is a line of thinking that says our way is the best way.
    These people live in our communities and work in our neighborhoods. We aren’t speaking of people across the country or on the border of Texas! It’s the same within the church. We act non-Christians can’t hear our judgment or that they’re somewhere miles away for someone else to worry about and evangelize. Maybe it’s time the church started showing love for others instead of contempt.
    Another passage of Blue Like Jazz that really gripped me (unfortunately with guilt), is the chapter about loving others. It’s so easy to use our love and affection like money–like a commodity. We only give it out if it’s a "good investment," and if someone doesn’t seem quite right we withhold it and imagine it will make them work harder to earn it…but all it does is stir up animosity and bitterness.
    All that I am saying is that we should try to learn from this cultural event and apply it to our churches. The rest of the world doesn’t speak our language, and so far we’ve been okay with that. But maybe it’s time we looked into taking that Spanish As a Second Language class… maybe we could benefit from seeing a point of view aside from our own. And maybe we could remember the value of a human being created by God.
    Okay, this was kind of a soapbox. but I truly think this is a great opportunity for us as the church to learn what not to do, and to open ourselves up to uncomfortable, non-traditional new ways of thinking.